Distilled Spirits: Getting High, then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher and Hopeless Drunk

When: Wed., Oct. 24, 7 p.m. 2012Price: free

Sobriety
memoirs are a dime a dozen these days, but Don Lattin's
is different -- really. Lattin is a reporter -- a
religion reporter, to be exact, and a former member of the adjunct faculty at UC Berkeley's Graduate School
of Journalism -- and it's that ethos that defines the book more than anything
else. Distilled Spirits interweaves Lattin's own story, told over thirty-plus years of "worshiping at the altar of drugs and
alcohol," with those of three other men: novelist Aldous Huxley, mystic Gerald
Heard, and Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson -- each of who were, like
Lattin, both religion junkies and, well, junkie junkies. The result is less like
yet another navel-gazing addiction diary and more like any other nonfiction
book, albeit one vividly written, about an exceptionally interesting subject,
and imbued with the kind of gravity and understanding only someone who's been
there and back can understand. Lattin reads at Books
Inc. Berkeley (1760 Fourth St., Berkeley) on Wednesday, Oct. 24; go see him. 7
p.m., free. BooksInc.net